“I felt kind of numb”: Spokane’s Asian-American community holds vigil to honor victims of gunfight in Atlanta

March 20, 2021, 7:09 p.m.

Elenee Dao

Posted: Mar 20, 2021 7:09 pm

SPOKANE, Washington. – Spokane’s Asian-American community mourns and remembers the lives lost in the Atlanta shootings earlier this week. One shooter killed eight people and six were women of Asian descent.

“You never think something like this would happen to you or that it would be so close to your home,” said Vina Cathcart, founder of Spokane’s United We Stand group.

The shootings were very close to the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community. They came at a time when the community is already vulnerable.

A report from California State University shows that the number of anti-Asian hate crimes rose nearly 150 percent from 2019 to 2020.

Cathcart and her group have put together a vigil in downtown Spokane. The AAPI community asks for unity and understanding and wants people to come together and fight against the same cause, against racism.

Police arrested a 21-year-old suspect in connection with the shootings.

“Seeing all of these recent hate crimes against Asian Americans really struck me as well, and made me, and my older parents in particular, fearful of going public in the first place,” said Rosie Zhou.

As she grew up knowing that she was Chinese, other people still brought this very attention to her. Zhou said she was on the receiving end of jokes that people thought were funny. She said people would say she did well on tests because she was Asian.

“Like, comments about the food of cats and dogs, it really affected me at the time,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t belong, like I was that foreigner in America, not really American.”

When she saw and heard the shooting Tuesday night, she was still processing what had happened.

“I really felt kind of numb,” she said.

The Cherokee Sheriff’s Office, the agency investigating the shootings, has still not said whether there is a racist motive.

It frustrated activists to know the suspect drove about 30 miles to another spa. Activists say there is a pattern. It’s a pattern of Asian Americans being targeted.

“I was just so sad and just read the stories of Xioajie Tan and Hyun Jung Grant… I read about their families and all of their dreams and hopes for the future. That really shook me the most, ”said Zhou.

Not only did the Asia-Pacific island community not immediately become aware of a motive, it was also outraged by the comments made by the sheriff’s office in a press conference on Wednesday. A spokesman said the suspect was “at the end of his rope” and “having a bad day”. Since then, the sheriff’s office has apologized and that spokesman has been removed from the case.

“You can condemn an act of hatred. You can convict a crime. You can condemn acts of violence. There is no problem with that. But to say he was having a bad day? I’ve had bad days. I don’t go around killing people, ”said Cathcart.

Stop AAPI Hate, an organization tracking hate incidents against islanders in the Asia-American Pacific, reported nearly 3,800 incidents of hatred from March 2020 to last April.

Cathcart says she was the victim of a verbal racist attack at a Spokane store a few months after the pandemic started.

“It was just me and that other woman down the hall,” she recalled. “As we were crossing I heard her on the phone and she said,” Oh my god, an Asian just walked into the aisle, I’m going to die of corona. “And then it was just a shock. What do you think of that?”

Education and speaking out against what is wrong is what Cathcart and others in the Asia Pacific islander community want. Zhou adds that there could be micro-attacks against Asian Americans and that it is important to call them if this happens.

People got together on Saturday night and asked about it while at the same time honoring the lost life and trying to make their voices heard.

Cathcart says support for the AAPI community is growing and she appreciates the efforts but hopes it will go beyond the tragic events.

“We have to consistently involve people to talk about, ‘Hey, how can I improve this community for Asian Americans? How can I improve this for Latino Americans? ‘”She continued. “At the end of the day we are all Americans, we have to find out how we can live together here.”

“As Asian-Americans, we belong here, we have contributed so much to this country, and we have contributed so much to this country,” said Zhou. “We are not foreigners who do not deserve respect… We stand up for ourselves and each other. We stand up against racism and are stronger together. “

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